Minimum wage campaign gearing up

Fast-food workers and their supporters have rallied on several occasions for a higher minimum wage. Diane Cates, center, a patron of the Wendy's where protestors gathered last year, holds a sign reading Stop Supersizing Poverty.
— Peggy Peattie

Fast-food workers and their supporters have rallied on several occasions for a higher minimum wage. Diane Cates, center, a patron of the Wendy's where protestors gathered last year, holds a sign reading Stop Supersizing Poverty.
— Peggy Peattie

With the City Council scheduled on Monday to override Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s veto of the wage increase, opponents said Friday they’ve already prepared language for referendum petitions and contacted signature-gathering firms.

“If the veto override happens, we’re ready to go,” said Jason Roe of the San Diego Small Business Coalition, a group including trade associations and the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

If the coalition collects the 34,000 signatures required for a referendum by Sept. 17, the wage hike won’t take effect unless a majority of San Diego voters approve it in June 2016.

Meanwhile, supporters of the wage increase said Friday they plan to spend roughly $300,000 on a public-awareness campaign urging registered San Diego voters not to sign referendum petitions.

That campaign will include sending mailers, visiting people door-to-door, getting opinion pieces published in local newspapers and other efforts to get their message into local media, said Mel Katz of Raise Up San Diego, a coalition of labor groups, low-wage workers and community leaders.

“If they move forward with a referendum, you’ll see a lot more activity by our side,” Katz said.

The wage increase, which would incrementally hike the minimum hourly pay rate in San Diego to $11.50 by January 2017, doesn’t require a public vote because it’s a compromise measure that will boost the economy and lift many people out of poverty, Katz said.

Many cities have recently raised their minimum wages as high as $15, he said. San Diego’s minimum wage would rise to $9.75 in January 2015, $10.50 in January 2016 and $11.50 in January 2017, with further increases tied to inflation starting in 2019.

Katz said that’s a relatively small increase over California’s minimum wage, which climbed from $8 to $9 last month and will increase to $10 in January 2016.

Roe and other opponents say the proposal goes too far, noting that $11.50 is nearly a 44 percent increase over the $8 rate that was in effect as recently as June. They say it will lead to layoffs and higher prices.

The signature-gathering campaign will focus less on the merits of minimum-wage policy and more on the City Council’s decision last month to approve it as an ordinance instead of submitting it to voters for approval.

“We’re not asking people to endorse our position on minimum wage, we’re merely asking them to let the voters decide,” Roe said. “The idea that disenfranchising voters is a defensible position is just ridiculous.”

Katz said that approach makes the referendum disingenuous.

“They’re going to say this is all about letting Joe Public vote on it, but their motivation is to rescind it,” Katz said. “What do you think happens when people coming out of a Vons run into someone with a clipboard saying ‘the City Council just passed this, shouldn’t you as a voter get a say?’”

Roe said it’s the campaign against the referendum that has ethical problems.